A blog about digital rhetoric that asks the burning questions about electronic bureaucracy and institutional subversion on the Internet.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Cyberspace War

In a New York Times article about how the "U.S. and Russia Differ on a Treaty for Cyberspace," the reporter notes that two superpowers are adopting fundamentally different paradigms through which to understand how new cybersecurity goals could be achieved through the traditional mechanism of the international treaty. More than virtual territory comes into play, as the two sides advance very different game plans.“We really believe it’s defense, defense, defense,” said the State Department official, who asked not to be identified because authorization had not been given to speak on the record. “They want to constrain offense. We needed to be able to criminalize these horrible 50,000 attacks we were getting a day.”

Rather than focus on criminal attacks by non-state actors, the Russians worry about military-style incursions led by government agencies and want a chemical weapons-style treaty to set limits and define the rules that constitute just warfare in new domains.